Mumbai under fire, Chennai under water

While Mumbai is reeling under fire from terrorists, Chennai is underwater due to rain from cyclone Nisha and poor drainage.

Making the most of it: A child plays in the water outside her colony at Adyar while her grandfather (not in frame) takes her picture.

Citizen Ordinary

My nerves are still jangling from what I've been following from last night and all throughout today. As an ordinary citizen, I have some ordinary thoughts:

1. If the terrorists are so brash and so confident that they can walk into the epitome of wealth and prosperity and do what they will to the richest, most important and powerful people in my country and around the world, what chance do I have? I travel by local transport to office everyday, walk exposed to bombs and gunfire, and no one provides me Z-class security. This begs the question - as one with means and options to move out of my country, do I do that to ensure the safety of my family or do I continue gamble with my life everyday?

2. There's a massive Intelligence failure. Heck, after what happened all through 2008 there's simply massive lack of intelligence from our elected representatives who promise us so much every five years or so. How do you justify this obviously co-ordinated effort? And after all this, we have leaders who try break the fragile thread of unity that keeps us together. And no one bothers. They tell me that I am not safe if I'm not born in a certain state or in a certain religion and the terrorists tell me that I am not safe if I go about my daily business. Who's worse? Where do I go? Even my insensitivity to the daily blasts has been ruptured due to the audacity of the events of the last 18 hours or so. I imagine two random guys arbitrarily training their AK-47s in a crowd. Worse, I imagine them getting their hands on nuclear / biological weapons. I feel the meaning of the word 'terror'.

As I walk out from work in a few minutes, my only consolation lies in the fact that the skies are dark and there's a cyclone warning. I hope it will dissuade the terrorists and the politicians from victimizing me. I'd rather be taken by God.

Cursory crimes

I'm a terrorist,
With guns and clout,
I shoot you down,
And revel in your doubt.

When we all team up,
We hear you shout,
We push you over,
And get our friends out.

As I write this, the Taj and Oberoi hotels, symbols of India's heritage and prosperity are still held under seige in Mumbai by less than a dozen terrorists. I pray that everyone is safe and this ordeal ends in the most bloodless way possible. Death to terrorism.

Beauteous machinations

Tel Aviv university reporters have reportedly built a beauty machine which apparently "turns pictures of your own ordinary face into that of a cover model". Not that I'm not vain, but my own ordinary face is my own ordinary business and I don't need some machine telling me what I should look like. From what I can see of the three pictures, it changes other features except the shape of your nose, I wonder then if it would have any effect on Shilpa Shetty's photograph from her pre-rhinoplasty days. .

Still, curiosity calls for an upload when the web service is finally published.

Samples of photographs manipulated by TAU's "Beauty Machine. " Original photographs in top row; manipulated photographis in bottom row.

As an aside, I can imagine why this dude thought of creating the machine. Just kidding, professor!

Free enterprise

Who says MBA's aren't enterprising? These two fellows who made losses in the stock market, came up with a unique investment strategy to offset them.

On a non-sarcastic note, I wonder why their qualifications are so important to this piece. If conditions were different, would they have really written "Arts students kidnap teenager after market losses"? We MBA's have got a terrible reputation, I say.

Breaking News: Australia lose to Bermuda

March 12th, 2011
Ricky Ponting's Australia lose 5-0 to Bermuda in Test Series

At the post-match conference, Ponting blamed the internet, the sun and the moon for the defeat. He said that he had lodged a complaint with the umpires about these. He also went on to say, "I'm a little bit disappointed with some of the criticism, particularly from former Australia captains and Cricket Australia board members. There are positives in losing a series. Losing can make good cricketers with character better." When asked why they were still the worst-behaved team, Ponting lost his cool and accused the reporter of questioning his integrity.

Apart from the media, Ponting so far has managed to alienate other cricket playing nations, commentators, Australian cricketing icons, Australian board members, journalists, the ICC chief and people with the surname Ponting. It is unclear if and when he will stop.

Matthew Hayden alluded to Andrew Symond's off-field behaviour saying, "Often we find ourselves with cans on our lips waiting for someone to either beat up another team mate or someone in the group to pay - all the little frustrations that happen in First World countries." When asked how it mattered, he vehemently replied, "It frustrates me that certain sections of humanity want to take someone like myself down."

Brett 'Binga' Lee who looked off color throughout the series blamed domestic problems for his poor performance. When asked to elaborate, he clarified that cane toads were destroying crocodile populations in Australia and everytime he ran up to bowl, he could see those poor creatures.

Andrew Symonds, meanwhile, reacted strongly to a question from the press asking him about his fitness. He later stated that the reporter he had mauled has used the word 'fitness' which sounded like 'monkey'. He invited the reporter for a drink but was refused.

When asked about the upcoming Border-Gavaskar series, coach Adam Gilchrist vowed to target Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh by writing three scathing books on him.

Harbhajan in reply was quoted as saying, "Uski maa kii..."

Sarah Palin's comment on Obama's use of sentences

Sarah Palin didn't want Obama to be president. Here's why, in her own words:

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also"

Read the complete article here. Andy Borowitz has a new fan. Me.

My friend's accent(s)

When my friend's father went to Australia, she developed while being in India all the while. Not that she even spoke to her dad that often. It gets worse - the accent she developed was American. No kidding.

Turns out, there's actually a disorder for this called the Foreign Accent Syndrome! Suddenly, everything's so clear. Must be more prevalent in India. Explains a lot of the accents that I hear. Hmm...

Alexa rankings for India

The Alexa rankings for India throw up some pretty interesting results, as they give insights into our surfing habits and by extension our other... er... habits. To illustrate my point, this is probably the only webpage in the world where you have Savita Bhabhi (warning: NSFW) and Bharat Matrimony appearing side-by-side. Of course, none of them are even close to debonairblog.com (warning: NSFW) which is more than 20 rungs higher on the ladder, just 3 spots below Orkut.

Youtube is at no 6, which means that either broadband has really penetrated the user base or we are just incredibly patient people. Given that I let myself be stuffed into a share auto everyday to work and also that my wife tolerates some of her colleagues, I would tend to think it's the latter.

Sleeping like a baby

One of the only times I like McCain (not that it matters), was after the US elections. Upon being asked how his post-campaigning life was, McCain responded:

Well, I've been sleeping like a baby. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry

Video below:

Do good, look good.

Charity never looked so good.

Cascading pointlessness

This is just sad on so many levels, it's not funny.

Consider this: first, a bunch of people hold a 'world's ugliest dog' contest. They get media to cover that event . Then, the ugliest dog dies. And the media covers that. And then, a blogger writes about that 'news' article. [update: and 921 people 'digged' it]When will it stop?

Oh, and while on breaking news about freak dogs, read this.

Hidden camera from the future - Ponting's meeting with Sutherland

Presenting the first DH Comic!

Inspired by Flyyoufools.com and this post.
All copyrights belong to respective owners of the images.

The 'Nano' of IT

I may not be Narendra Modi's biggest fan, but he certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to business. Take this quote from a recent article, for example:

Why cannot we develop MS Windows in India, or a Google or a Yahoo? If an Indian can develop Hotmail and given that 30 per cent of Windows developers may well be Indians in any case, the task does not look all that difficult. What is required is a leap of faith, a paradigm shift.

Spot on, Mr Modi.

A caveat though: what he's talking about is product-related innovation only. While I totally agree with him that we are not up there in terms of technology products (with or without a social angle), we did revolutionalize the way IT is done around the world, and business model-related innovation is as commendable as product-related innovation.

What say, lurkers? Time to comment!

Yo momma!

Just when I thought the most exciting thing on TV this evening was and ICL match featuring something-heroes versus something-champs, I happened to chance-surf upon a show called 'Yo momma' on VH1. More than the show itself, what was fascinating was the evolution of street culture into an art form.

As an Indian, it particularly struck me how other nations permit art forms to grow organically without censorship or protest. We are still in the stage where our artists have to apologize for being culture-sensitive. Is that why most developed nations tend to move away from organized religion?

One would think those countries need CRAP man.

Water to be banned in India

A national policy on consumption of water in public places will be soon be implemented in the country, Dr Ramadoss said.

It's true. Anyone caught drinking water publicly will be punished. If you don't believe me, read this article. What to do? Better start smuggling some water.

And while on 'breaking news', guess who's going to the moon? Check out Utopia. :)

'India is the worst behaved team'

India's dominant position in the third Test of the 2008 Border-Gavaskar trophy has elicited quite a desperate response not only from the Australian team,where Ricky Ponting actually took up the ball, but also from the Australian media. To quote a phrase from a recent report by 'The Australian':

...continued India's record as the worst behaved team in the world over the past decade.

Unfortunately for Mr Conn who penned that article, another article in his very own paper reads "Gambhir and Watson charged". I wonder why Mr Watson was charged if India are the worse team and Gambhir is obviously at fault? Is there some sort of denial here? Or is it just sour grapes again? Reminds me of a certain Mr Andrew McKinlay.

Next time you reach the airport...

...pray that your flight gets cancelled, you may just end up getting about one lakh rupees. Look at what happened to this family.